JULIUS CAESAR VARIETY SHOW @ Summerhall
Joy Nesbitt’s new play is a candid, funny and deeply discomforting success exploring artistic prejudice in theatre
Three actors and a musician are warming up: stretching, trilling, practising their lines, ready to audition with their nameless yet critically acclaimed director. As the audience files in for JULIUS CAESAR VARIETY SHOW, each character remains calm, candid and indifferent to the crowd. It isn’t until the arrival of the director – who enters through the audience and sits amongst them for much of the performance – that the action starts and conflicts begin to rise.
Daniel Mahon displays natural comedic talent as the director’s right-hand actor Laurence, with Pattie Maguire and Loré Adewusi each bringing a more serious tone and acting with abounding energy. Watching each of these actors evolve is deeply satisfying, as is watching their relationships unfold. No tension is left unexplored, and each of the three relationships is fraught with anxiety and strife.
Ultan Pringle plays the intense, overly dramaturgical scumbag director whose sick narcissism, open prejudice, and devotion to exploring and exploiting his actors causes the most central conflicts of the play. Though starting perhaps a little too indirect, Pringle mounts into a storming, frothing, fear-inducing crescendo by the play’s finale, and is truly frightening.
The whole performance is stripped back and deeply candid, occasionally straying a little towards ambling, but always regaining exceptional clarity at the most crucial moments. Notably, through the talent of Conrad Jones Brangan, almost the entire performance is scored with diegetic music from a nameless day-rate musician. With his character having his own conflicts and desires, Brangan’s performance is a masterclass in how to casually and naturally add tension to a scene, and how to achieve outbursts of laughter from a single, well-timed note.
Inclining slowly before hurtling between comedy and distress at breakneck speed, Joy Nesbitt’s play is both entertaining and politically attuned, and makes for a wonderfully charming hidden Fringe gem.
JULIUS CAESAR VARIETY SHOW, Summerhall (Red Lecture Theatre), until 31 Aug (not 17, 24), 4.45pm, £16-18.50